


Purge

by Leidolette



Category: Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
Genre: Angst, Bitterness, F/M, Masturbation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-11
Updated: 2020-12-11
Packaged: 2021-03-10 20:47:38
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,095
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28003377
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Leidolette/pseuds/Leidolette
Summary: After his wretched first proposal, Darcy gets worse before he gets better.
Relationships: Elizabeth Bennet/Fitzwilliam Darcy
Comments: 12
Kudos: 135





	Purge

After his extended Easter visit at Rosings, Mr. Darcy returned to London and stepped back into his life in town like nothing happened. Because nothing did happen. His life hadn’t changed; he was still the rich, eligible bachelor he had been two months ago. 

There was no drowning himself in drink or pacing his room at all hours or any of those scenes of dramatic melancholy. He paid his calls on his friends and acquaintances. He conducted his business and managed his financial affairs, as gentlemen are called upon to do. 

_Gentlemanly behavior..._

He wished a shake of the head would fling the memory of Miss Bennet’s words out of his head forever and let him return to his former routine in peace. He settled for viciously shutting down the thought and turning his attention to the package containing the documents he’d just retrieved from the office of his solicitor. He tucked it more firmly under his arm. 

A woman to his left with her own package — much larger — balanced in her arms approached a shop door. Judging by the woman’s attire, the shop might belong to her family. Though the woman was clear across the street, Darcy hurried to grab the door and hold it open for her. 

“Madam,” he said, and inclined his head graciously, bidding her enter. 

“Oh,” the woman said, faintly surprised. “Thank you, sir.” She stepped inside rather gingerly. 

Darcy, feeling as if he’d scored a point, touched his hand to the brim of his hat and continued down the street. He could be a damned gentleman. 

_And it’s not as if_ she _had acted in a manner suitable for a gentleman’s daughter._ His train of thought rose from the grave, ignoring that he had buried it only moments ago. 

Elizabeth Bennet had been obstinate and provoking on more than one occasion. The only good turn the lady had seen fit to do him was to decline his hand and reveal what a ghastly mistake it would have been to marry her. Her ridiculous defense of Wickham was all the proof he needed that she would not suit him — not in any life. 

Even in the privacy of his mind, Darcy’s thoughts were silent on the subject of his conduct regarding Charles Bingley and Jane Bennet.

* * *

Saturday found Darcy at one of the music shops on new Bond Street perusing the newly arrived sheet music without much hope of finding something that would catch Georgiana’s interest. Unfortunately, Mr. Pitt also found Darcy in the shop not ten minutes after Darcy had entered. Mr. Pitt, an acquaintance of Darcy’s late father, was kindly enough, but he had a terrible habit of relating every present occasion, no matter how trifling, to some or other event taking place twenty years in the past. At least. 

Mr. Pitt was deep into one of these maddeningly mundane tales (with Darcy politely nodding his head at the proper moments as he continued to search through the sheets) when, out of the corner of his eye, Darcy saw Elizabeth Bennet pass by the window at the front of the shop. 

“Then it came to light that my brother had been to the same theater not a week before! And I thought it was such a happy coincidence; that two members of the same family should visit the same establishment within a se’enight of the other and not know of it. I just had to -- I say, Darcy! Where are you off to?”

But Darcy was already out the door. 

Elizabeth was wearing a dress that he’d never seen before, it fluttered in the breeze as she turned a corner off the main thoroughfare up ahead. A curl of her dark hair escaped her bonnet. Darcy followed, his long stride as quick as he could make it without breaking into a run. Almost...

And then he turned the corner, and Elizabeth Bennet was angled towards Mr. Darcy on the threshold of a shop, chatting with an older man. 

And the woman was not Elizabeth Bennet. 

Mr. Darcy slowed to a near stop. It were as if he were waking from a dream. Now that he saw her face, the woman didn’t even particularly resemble Ms. Bennet; perhaps only a little, from behind. Why had he been so sure that it was her?

With a jerk, Darcy turned back in the direction that he’d come. By the time he was pushing open the door to the shop again, he had completely regained his composure. 

“Terribly sorry, Mr. Pitt,” he said, sliding back into the space next to the still rather startled Mr. Pitt, “I thought I saw a particular acquaintance passing by. Please, tell me more about your brother and the theater.”

* * *

Mrs. Lawrence’s ball was fashionable, and well-attended, and Mr. Darcy attended the event with every expectation that he would have a pleasant time. The only mark against it was that Bingley had not been invited; but then, Mrs. Lawrence a particular sort of hostess, and was perhaps overly attentive to lineage and rank. Still, it was no hardship to attend: the ballroom was wide and well-decorated, the guests agreeable, and, not long after Darcy arrived, he received the attentions of a pretty young lady. 

The woman was a young lady named Miss Selwyn. And, uncharacteristically, she was the one who started it. Nothing beyond the realm of decorum, but the normally shy girl had been apparently transformed into an excitable girl pleased to be out for an evening’s entertainment — and perhaps made a bit lightheaded from the wine. So Miss Selwyn, after finding herself dancing with an extremely eligible bachelor, caressed her thumb along the interior of his palm and made excessive eye contact.

Mr. Darcy, who only asked Miss Selwyn for a dance as a matter of course, noticed this surprisingly forward attention from her right away. It was nice, if not particularly special for him. Miss Selwyn wasn’t simpering, at least. He was appreciated here, wanted. 

His gaze quickly ran over Miss Selwyn. She was really a perfectly fine girl. 

If he offered right now, he thought that she would accept. Her family was respectable, and so was her dowry. It wouldn't make a single wave amoung society if he selected her to be his life's companion. Her friends would all send their well-wishes.

The thought was an acidic pleasure in Darcy’s head. He was an extremely eligible bachelor, and there was no dearth of suitable young ladies, like the one in front of him. Despite the incident at Rosings, (which was really just a tiny bump in the road of life) everything was as it should be. 

Still, the satisfaction of that thought didn’t feel quite as... well _satisfying_ as it ought.

He circulated throughout the room to an appropriate degree throughout the rest of the evening, and then made his exit. He said his farewells to Ms. Selwyn, but not with any particular distinction. Still, she smiled as brightly as the sun. He felt like a cad.

* * *

Darcy was not able to go to sleep at his accustomed time that night. But, to be certain, there was no tossing and turning from heartache, or however a novelist with a more romantic inclination may have described it, and the hours weren’t slipping away from melancholy, as it was barely eleven o’ clock. 

Still, though there may have been a distinct lack of gothic drama, the ordinary and prosaic problem of bothersome thoughts was enough to keep Darcy awake in bed, forced to contend with his active mind. It wandered from from one topic to the next without cease. He tried mentally reciting a prayer learned by rote, and then a series of algebraic equations from his schoolboy days. Neither did much to stop his unruly brain from alighting on the subject that he least wanted to contemplate. 

What if Miss Elizabeth Bennet had been in attendance at Mrs. Lawrence’s ball that evening? She, of course, would not fit in easily as one of the established set that frequented Mrs. Lawrence’s social events, but Darcy couldn’t help but imagine that a knowing smile from her while watching Miss Selwyn’s overt enthusiastic overtures towards him would make him feel he were the gauche one. 

And if Elizabeth Bennet had seen him following after that poor imitation of her last week like a fool? Darcy could feel his cheeks turn hot there in the darkness of his bedroom. The girl had a high enough opinion of herself already. She would think that he had moved towards her to beg for her acceptance of his suit, or to declare her right in all her sundry ways of thinking. 

She would laugh at him, he knew. A man turned absurd by romantic folly, she would think, when he has trumpeted to the heavens that he had no faults!

 _I never said such a thing_ , he wanted to protest, as if it could reach her all the way in Longbourne.

If he could just be alone with her one more time. The letter Mr. Darcy had delivered into her possession at Rosings no longer satisfied him; with just a little more time he could explain himself to her, show her how truly pure his motivations had been. She would certainly accept his reasoning, then. 

He turned from his side onto his back, and stared blankly at the dim, moonlit ceiling as his mind contrived some unexplained circumstance which would result in Miss Elizabeth Bennet here, in London, sitting down for tea with him in the parlor of his townhouse. 

He imagined what she would say, once she understood. Maybe she would crinkle her eyes in a rueful smile and say, “Mr. Darcy, I know this has been long in coming, and surely cannot surprise you, but I must offer you my sincerest apologies.”

“All is forgotten,” Darcy would respond, perfectly composed. 

“No, no, sir. I cannot forget the ways in which I have mistreated you.”

Generous, as he should be, in the face of a penitent adversary, Darcy would say, “Madam, do not trouble yourself. We shall be as friends from now on.”

She would glance down and smile, and they would pleasantly finish their tea. He would offer his arm, and she would take it. They would walk the back garden of his town house; her listening to him recount a few of his favorite memories of playing in the garden as a child and adding her own teasing comments. Her archness would be softened by her newfound humility. 

She would laugh at something he said, and then he would turn to her, cupping her chin, and gently pull her into a long, sweet kiss. After a considerable stretch of time, Elizabeth would pull back, dark eyes sparkling, lips red and warm, and look at him with such affection that no one in the world could mistake for anything but love. 

And then she would say...

And then...

And then the whole fantasy fell apart, because, for the life of him, he could not imagine what she would say next. He never could quite anticipate her responses; the Elizabeth Bennet in his head was only a pale imitation of her worldly counterpart. 

He was still hard from the breathless fantasy kiss — when had that happened? — so he conjured up a rather generic scene of Miss Elizabeth Bennet bouncing on his cock, garden storyline abandoned. He worked himself quickly and came a few moments later, but the orgasm was nowhere near as good as the fantasy promised at the start. 

And the pleasant blankness he'd been hoping for afterwards didn't come. Instead, he just cleaned up and went back to staring at the ceiling, not a wink closer to sleep.

It began to dawn on Darcy -- to truly sink into his bones -- that this would be the conclusion to their acquaintance. That he really was never going to hear what Elizabeth was going to say next ever again. 

He was also starting to realize that he hadn't been feeling so gentlemanly lately. He had to admit, if only in the darkness of a solitary night, that when he’d had the wherewithal to listen to his own thoughts as a outsider would, he had not been proud of their sentiments. 

Spite had become his companion now, instead of Elizabeth, and it was a poor substitute. 

Darcy shifted again on the bed, too tired of himself to do more than fruitlessly close his eyes. He tried to imagine how Elizabeth would laugh at him if she knew. 

He couldn’t even do that.

**Author's Note:**

> I have to admit, I like my Austen men when they are deepest in denial and at their most pathetic.


End file.
